The Ultimate Answer to Kings

The other day I got an extremely rare personal visit to the Secret Lair. My longtime neighbors and friends S&L came putting up in their ATV, having texted ahead first so as to give me time to a)be home, and b)have home, dog and self presentable. I wasn’t the only one: They made the round of the Gulch, bringing a bit of cheer to all the loonies and loners who hadn’t previously expressed a desire not to be included on any such list.

They didn’t come empty-handed:

There was a whole little tub of hand-baked goodies, and a bottle of better-than-dollar-store wine. News from their other stops in the circuit. In general, I guess you could call it glad tidings.

Being the closest thing to normal people of anyone I know in the Gulch, S&L have extended family elsewhere and they set off yesterday to spend the holiday with them. But first they took the time to kindly touch base with those of their neighbors who, through choice or circumstance, don’t have any such place to be.

I can’t speak for anybody else – Personally I just don’t do holidays and am not pining away for lack of personal or family contact on any given one. But I’m not everybody, and I thought that was a really nice thing to do, is all.

Neighbor L asked me to come help with cleaning the pipe for their main pellet stove this morning. It turned out to be more technically challenging than I expected.

The stovepipe is 4″, and the sections have these very annoying tab-and-groove locking surfaces with which I’m mostly unfamiliar except to vaguely recall that other times when I encountered them they turned out to be, well, very annoying. Getting it apart was hard enough: Getting it back together was starting to look impossible.

I’ve mentioned before that D and L had long since divided their house’s maintenance needs into fairly rigid territories, and each kept the peace by carefully not infringing on his or her mate’s territory. They’re both kind of OCD in such matters, which can be entertaining to watch as long as I’m not stuck in the middle. Alas, the stovepipe is firmly in D’s territory, and he’s been badly hampered by some injuries and declining health, including a couple of recent TIAs which have done nothing to improve his ability to verbally communicate. He can’t walk at all, and only stubbornness has kept him from resorting to a wheelchair.

So L and I got the pipe apart and brushed out without any serious problems, but then were stumped as to how to put it back together. This was all in their big living room: D was in his chair watching the whole thing, no doubt in mounting frustration at not being able to brush me out of the way and just f*cking do it. He clearly understood where we were going wrong and kept trying to explain how to do it right. I, being stuck, was trying to seriously listen to his instruction but he wasn’t making a lot of sense. L, having lived with this for over a year now and not the most patient of souls at the best of times, was ignoring him when I was hoping she’d, you know, interpret.

Finally I either independently figured out what I’d been doing wrong or what he had been valiantly trying to tell me sank in, maybe a combination of the two, and it all went together like a child’s jigsaw puzzle. Happy smiles all around and the tension level in the room went down remarkably.

At least it wasn’t a pointless exercise: we got quite a lot of soot out of that pipe. I really thought pellet stoves burned cleaner than that.

I suspect anybody who gets electricity from solar panels and who lives in a place with actual winter probably pays a lot of attention to the solstice. I certainly do, and more so this year since Ian’s power system got its big downgrade in battery power.

In the Lair it matters but not as much. Day before yesterday I roasted pork, which took about an hour and a half, and I really should have started earlier in the day. My gas oven ironically requires a lot of juice, and in winter should really only be used in the middle of the day (or powered by a generator, which I also considered doing but was too lazy to drag it out of the cabin to the powershed.) But other than anomalous behavior like that, my small battery bank matches my very modest electricity needs. Let’s just say LED lighting was a bigger revolution in my life than it probably was in yours.

But Ian’s place has bigger amperage draws, with a water pressure pump, a refrigerator, and a washer and dryer. The fridge doesn’t actually draw much and I can choose when to use the washer (and have no need to use the dryer at all in winter) but that pump turned out to be a bit of a problem once I didn’t have the big battery bank for a cushion. So I took the pump off its 12/12 timer and just manually turn it on when I need water pressure, and then right back off again. Which is probably screwing up the water softener’s operation but it’s only for another couple of months.

So anyway, even though so far this winter has been freakishly mild – it’s sunny and 62^o at the moment – that’s why I’ve been counting the days till December 21, the shortest day in the year. In theory, assuming we don’t get a lot of cloudy weather* the electricity situation at Ian’s Cave can only gradually improve from this point on.

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*which of course at some point we certainly will, unless ‘climate change’ is working miracles. But that’s so unpredictable I can’t really plan for it except to let the laundry pile up until it passes.

Yesterday we went to town for water and groceries, and at the store I found a pound and a half hunk of pork that clawed at me through the bars and demanded I take it home.

I’m not the world’s greatest cook – or the world’s billionth-greatest cook – but roast pork is simple. And I got it almost perfect this time. My one failure was not stocking spare batteries for my meat thermometer; the inside could have been a bit more done but the bulk of it was falling apart at the touch of a fork and the crust and the spice rub was the best I’ve ever done. Tobie and I went through more than half last night. He did not refuse seconds.

Maybe it’s because I turned 70 this year and I’m officially old: I’ve spent the year tripping over how different old me is from young me.

Today’s revelation is about Christmas carols: when I was a child I loved the sound of them for reasons obvious and maybe not so much. Couldn’t imagine not doing so. When I was a young man and my immediate family issues were behind me except for the emotional backwash I was indifferent toward most of them. Maybe a little nostalgic.

But now I’m a smelly old grinch and I have to admit: I’m looking forward to New Years when the damned things traditionally go away. They’re like oversweet holiday taffy. Stuck to the sole of your shoe.

They’re certainly one more good reason to live alone in the boondocks where you get to pick your own musical accompaniment most of the time. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to work on getting Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree out of my head. Could be worse: could be The Little Drummer Boy…

For well over ten years I carried a .44 revolver, eventually upgrading to the pistol of my dreams, a S&W Model 69 .44 Magnum.

The M69 is, in my opinion, the (almost) perfect trail gun: Light enough to carry all the time without too much hassle but capable of chambering and safely firing the heaviest magnum loads (if necessary: You won’t like it but you can do it.) The one thing I didn’t like about it, and this always perplexed me because it otherwise seemed designed for trail use, was the tiny trigger guard that forbade use with even unlined gloves.

A couple of years ago I began rather sadly questioning the need to walk around all the time with 3 pounds of iron and an assortment of .44 loads. This place has gotten kind of boring, to be honest: All the interesting animals have gone away. I wasn’t going to go unarmed, that doesn’t suit me, but I got to thinking maybe it was time to downgrade to a general-purpose 9mm. A good pound lighter, 17-round mag, no need for speedloaders, good for anything but maybe bears – and nobody’s seen a bear around here since 2011. In April of this year, courtesy of my friend Ian, I finally acquired one. Arex Delta Gen II. Took some breaking-in but we finally became friends.

Then winter started sneaking up on me and the question arose: How does this thing work with gloves? And the answer was…

Yes, it’s unloaded. I’m not a moron.

And this morning, standing on the porch just prior to the first pee, I got my chance to try it for real. Tobie was bothered by this cottontail in the yard which wasn’t the least bit bothered by him. Tobie, bless his heart, didn’t just charge off after the rabbit. He wanted to, but obeyed his training and didn’t do it. But this stupid rabbit just stood there, unaware and/or uncaring about the disruption in procedure it was causing. I keep the magazine loaded with tragically expensive super ammo but the chamber has one round of cheap FMJ just for situations like this. Not even thinking about the glove situation until I’d done it, I drew and fired from the porch. And even though I was wearing a lightly-lined glove it didn’t cause any problem at all.

So that’s a problem that’s gone away. Couldn’t do it with a heavy glove, but the most common sort don’t get in my way.

Went out and cleaned up the mess after breakfast, carrying it out to the wash to make some coyote’s day. One of the things I always held against Elmer Keith, whose work on pistols I’ve read fairly extensively over the decades, is how casual he seemed about using live animals for target practice. I get it, we’re from different cultures but I don’t like killing things for sport. This rabbit had moved into my yard, though, and had to go or he’d always be upsetting my dog. Had the same problem with Little Bear, who never learned not to chase them when we were supposed to be doing other things, and sometimes I had to go around and clean them out of the yard with a .22. Maybe it’s time to do that, they seem to be getting common again.

I replaced the front brake pads a couple of months ago but always intended to wait till winter to attack the rear, both because the rear also needed a new tire and because I’ve seldom messed with multi-gear bikes before and all that ironmongery intimidates me.

Always had a problem visualizing windy things like belts and chains, so…

…I took a bunch of photographs before taking the wheel off in case I ended up having to unwind the chain or something. Turned out not to be necessary but you know what they say about how it’s better to have things you don’t need.

Anyway – the front brakes taught me that replacing pads was extremely simple, and it was. Until I tried to put the newly-shod rear wheel back on the bike without loosening the caliper. The rear pads were substantially more worn than the fronts, go figure, and it took the old man a minute or two to remember that I had adjusted the hell out of the rear brakes over more than five years and the caliper needed to be loosened, a lot, before the disk would fit between the new pads.

I have had a spare tire in storage since 2019, the same year I got the bike, so logistically the job couldn’t have been simpler. Intended to re-use the old tube until I inspected it…

Then decided…nah. I have a few spare tubes.

Got the machine back together, with no more hiccups once I remembered to loosen that brake caliper, tightened everything down, re-adjusted the caliper,

…stress-tested my nice cordless inflator…

…and took it outside for a brief test ride.

Ready for five more years!

Because the bike only sees pavement in town, I expect to have to do all this beside a dirt road at some point. So far, by some miracle, that hasn’t happened but it will. So I made a point of only doing all this with tools actually carried on the bike at all times. To my satisfaction, that worked quite well.

This is the year Uncle Joel officially got too old for this shit.

Next year I’m definitely looking into buying wood from those Mexican guys in town.

Actually it’s been such an amazingly mild December that I’m not even using wood right now. But that’s gonna change at some point. Probably in a dramatic fashion, knowing the weather around here.

I always had this image of the Concorde jets – they seemed huge in the pictures available at the time. But then I saw one when I was changing planes at De Gaulle airport…

And the subject came up at my kitchen table for some reason, some time later. I said to my wife, “You know, they’re surprisingly small.” And she asked, “Where did you see one?” And I stupidly answered, “At De Gaulle.”

And she rose up from her chair in righteous wrath and angrily demanded, “You’ve been to Paris?” As if I had somehow slighted her by not sneaking her aboard with my luggage.

And I said, “No, I’ve been to De Gaulle. On my way to yet another godforsaken desert hellhole to keep a roof over our heads. I’ve never actually seen Paris.”

And it barely got me through breakfast alive.

In his defense he was provoked.

There’s a heavy-duty carabiner on the end of Tobie’s heavy-duty rope, so that I can clip it to a heavy-duty loop of braided 550 cord that I slide over my heavy-duty belt – all against the moment when Tobie decides to launch after something while my attention is elsewhere.

It doesn’t happen often – Tobie is a lot less impulsive about such things, or maybe a lot less ecumenical about what he’ll surrender to his impulses over, than Little Bear was. THAT was a dog who needed a heavy-duty walking leash, that I didn’t ever dare take my hand off. But still – when Tobie does give in to the temptation to launch after something, he does it right. And this isn’t the first belt he’s broken.

The first time, he broke the plastic stiffener that’s sewn between nylon layers. I bought a more expensive version of the same idea: This time the stiffener held up but the ratchet teeth broke off. I had a hell of a time getting the belt off my pants. Now that I’m on Social Security I’m going to try the real thing, forgetting the chinese knockoffs. I like this style of belt but the cheap copies are the weak point in my “no you can’t chase that elk” strategy.

Yes, it was an elk. They’re suddenly all around us. Tobie went nuts yesterday over something I couldn’t see, and when I went outside with my rifle to save the day he had just been baying at an innocent elk in the wash. This morning when we got to the road at the top of the ridge there were tracks everywhere so I knew they were around and should have been paying more attention: One broke cover and Tobie saw it before I did. I was looking elsewhere and not holding the leash. Expensive mistake.

Terrapod asked…

Hey Joel, how is that Carhart winter coat holding up? Is it time for a new one yet?

My nice Redneck Cartier coat came to me in January 2017 after a rather convoluted drama, and I was delighted with it. This isn’t Minnesota and I’m retired from 8-5 work so even though it’s eight years old next month…

…it’s still in fine shape. A little faded from washing, a little frayed around the cuffs, but that just means I’ve loved it till it’s a little real. Not in need of replacement. And it’s coincidental that I should have seen Terrapod’s question this morning, because…

This very morning it got taken out of the closet for more than autumn inspection for the first time this winter.

I love this coat, and it’s the first real big-boy Carhartt coat I ever owned, made possible by a generous donation (by Terrapod, if I remember correctly), and the story of how I ended up with this particular one is, as previously implied, a little involved. Terrapod sent me one for Christmas 2016, and it arrived at my maildrop in the Big City just in time to miss the care package delivery so I didn’t get it here at the Gulch. But by wild coincidence that was the first time in six years I was going to the city to visit with Landlady so the coat was there when I got there. The coat was one of those tan jobs with the corduroy collar and quilted lining, size large, and it fit me like a tent. I really wanted this coat but looked up at Landlady and she just shook her head sadly.

Well, no problem, Terrapod had thoughtfully included the Tractor Supply receipt and those stores are all over this state, so a couple of days later I went to a Tractor Supply in hope of making an exchange. Unfortunately this particular city resides in a region where “winter” is just a way of saying “less hot,” and the store didn’t stock coats at all. Lots of Carhartt merch, but no actual coats. Now I was really bummed.

But on the way home at the end of the week, our route took us through the big town about 50 miles from the Gulch, which is in the upper part of the state at about 7000 feet and does contain a Tractor Supply, which surely stocked Carhartt coats. We stopped at the store on the way through.

It was the first week in January and very cold, snowy, windy. I struggled out with my coat still in its bag, clutching the receipt. I’m the poster boy for social awkwardness and had kind of been hoping Landlady would handle the ‘talking to strangers’ phase but she elected to stay in the warm car. Nevertheless the people in the store were very friendly and quite willing to let me exchange the too-big coat for whatever I could find on their rack. Ha! I should have been warned by “whatever I could find on the rack.” It was the week after Christmas after all. The racks were terminally picked-over.

I found some size large coats that were too big, some size medium coats that were too small, a few oddballs in obnoxious colors I didn’t want. And one single black chore coat with a sherpa lining that fit me like it was bespoke at Kingsman Tailors. The only thing that could possibly have improved it was if it came in green. I snatched it immediately: They logged the exchange at the counter and that was that.

And I’ve taken very good care of it ever since.

Two mornings ago Tobie woke me, very excited, to announce that something extremely important was happening outdoors and that I should get up immediately and let him out to investigate, defend against and/or consume, as the situation may demand. I told him to shut up and come back when it was light enough to see, then went back to sleep.

Surprisingly, the situation still obtained when I finally did get up and took him outside for a first pee. Across the wash, maybe 150 yards from the porch, the ground rises to a mud-flat with lots of brush and then to a bare rocky slope that steepens but never quite becomes a cliff, rising about 50 feet before it flattens out again. Up that slope there used to be a regular game trail, and it wasn’t unusual to see elk climbing it in single file. But starting nine years ago when the cattle took over, elk became rarer and finally disappeared entirely.

Elk are well camouflaged and my eyesight is going so even though Tobie stood on the driveway and pointed them out to me I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary at first: but then some of them saw us or caught our scent and started pronking up the slope, so that their motion was undeniable even to my eyes. I saw four of them and there were probably more. Welcome back! Ironic since just lately I’ve seen a small gang of cattle back in the general area.

Then this morning I found small hoofprints that could pretty much only have been made by a mule deer, which I also haven’t seen around here in a few years.

The native ungulates don’t seem to like sharing space with cattle, for reasons I don’t understand. Hard to imagine that the cattle would bother them, with the possible exception of the breed bulls. When they’re around they’re not shy about using the cattle’s waterer, but never when the cattle are around.

…and unless you give me some warning my everyday rig is, you know, gonna be what I wear every day…

But I didn’t know we were going into town. So I got stuck trying to tuck a low-rise holster under a hoodie that pretty much stops at the waist.

We were just supposed to go to the dump today.

No big deal. And no reason to put on townie clothes.

Didn’t know till we were done that L had errands she wanted to run in town. And while we were there I should take the time to get some more eggs.

In this particular town it really doesn’t matter. You see people walking around with open sidearms all the time. But since the law that forbade concealed carry changed over ten years ago I got into the habit of covering my gun just because I don’t like attention, positive or negative. And now here I was buying eggs with my Arex hanging out. It was kind of irritating. If I’d known we were going to town I’d have worn something with a longer hem, is all.

On the way home I reflected on the nice sunny warm day, and decided to break a(nother) personal rule.

If I could get home while the sun was still beating on Ian’s solar panels, I was going to chase the pressure pump’s effect on the batteries and have maybe the last shower of the year.

Gad, I love that shower. You really don’t know what a blessing the simple shower is till you’ve gone a decade or two without one.

…I had to find a source for new cutting chains before I could convert that pile of juniper in my yard into firewood. Oh, I sharpened the one chain but it never went particularly well and I was spending more time filing than cutting. I went to the saw shop in the crappy little town nearest where I live, and that’s when the other shoe fell concerning my off-brand electric chainsaw. “Oh, we don’t stock that size chain. Don’t think anybody does.”

So I went online. I hate buying stuff with sizes online. But to my utter amazement…

…when my two new chains finally arrived yesterday, they fit the bar! Which meant I could finally finish that part of winter woodcutting.

People, I had One Cut Left before I was completely done with the chainsaw. One! But…

Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to get that far toward done. But still. Murphy was snickering over my shoulder.

Now I have to split all that stuff in the wheelbarrow. Then…

…break out the Sawzall to knock those pallets apart, and…

Chop what’s left into stove lengths with the table saw. I’m really pushing the firewood thing this year: Normally I’m done with this before November. But I’ve been feeling like an old man for the past couple of months, and letting small setbacks stop me.

Tobie helped…

Even since he was a puppy he’s been such a good boy about just hanging out and amusing himself while I work in the yard. He doesn’t need constant validation, he just wants to be where I’m doing stuff.

Hey, I saw something cool in the sky yesterday while I was taking in the laundry.

Two suns! I expect there was a bunch of ice crystals in that cloud that the light was reflecting from. I don’t remember ever seeing that before.

Another ton of wood pellets at D&L’s place.

Unlike other times I had to take prior precautions to make sure I had two functional legs for this one. The knee is feeling better but this wasn’t the time to indulge in a 10-mile hike or something equally stupid, because…

L can get them off the pallet and onto the tailgate but of the three of us I’m the only one who can still haul 50 bags from the truck to the pile.

And in the end…

…I got some nice hardwood for the woodstove.

Which makes it hard to get your chores done, to say nothing of explaining all those truncated walkies to Tobie the Peripatetic Mutt. But…

…my right knee, which is my only intact knee, started going south on me about a year and a half ago. Just an annoyance until this past week when I got out of bed and couldn’t even fully flex it. I expected to have trouble with the left one when I got old, it was put back together from little pieces. Ironically it’s fine. It’s just the stump that keeps fraying at the end.

The right one got operated on twice: Once to install a big metal spike through my shinbone, then again to remove the spike when it worked its way out and wrecked the cartilage in the knee. I had trouble with the knee for a while in my twenties, then it seemed to heal. Part of getting old is finding out that all that self-congratulation for your healing ability was just waiting to bite you in the ego.

So I’ve been sitting a lot, and taking a lot of ibuprofen and slathering the joint with menthol-smelling goo. It’s not as bad as it was, but I don’t think it’s really going to get better. Maybe next year’s building project will be adding a lame-old-man ramp to the porch.

I think this is as long as I’ve ever gone without posting when the blog was actually working: Sorry about that, just haven’t been in a very talkative mood – besides which nothing special has really been going on. But I have at least been keeping up with the daily stuff, if sometimes only minimally. This morning dawned pleasant, so I caught up with some laundry…

…and that’s probably all the excitement there’ll be for the day.

It’s kinda funny that my most constant seasonal cue is that tree, right across the street from the water vending station Neighbor L and I go to every week.

I guess because there’s nothing better to do while waiting for water bottles to fill than look at the trees. I don’t have much in the way of trees where I live. And that one won’t raise my spirits for another six months or so, when it buds out again.

Speaking of winter…

I reached another milestone this morning, with mild fingertip frostburn for the first time. Picked the wrong gloves.

Speaking of trips to town…

Tobie has become completely spoiled with Jeep rides. He’s plenty old enough and plenty smart enough to know that he never gets a ride when I load the water bottles into the Jeep, and he never used to give me a hard time about it. He just goes to his bed and shoots Guilt Rays at me till I’m gone. But this morning he apparently figured that since Jeep rides have been so abundant lately it was worth a try. Imagine that imploring stare while his hindquarters oscillate so hard you expect them to unscrew from his frontquarters. Alas, Tobie, I’m an old hand at this by now. You can make me feel guilty, but you can’t make me change my mind. You’re not gonna die.

And the last harbinger of winter…

…these damned things. And the poor battered tailgate of my poor worn-out Jeep, which couldn’t take a mild knock from a rolling propane bottle. Shouldn’t have loaded it like that.

Nice sunny day, though. Might hit sixty. So it’s not quite winter yet.

In the Spring my redneck water heater’s hoses were so full of loose scale I couldn’t get any pressure out of the spigot at all. Took forever to clear it all out. I swore that this time I’d take the whole thing down, drain the hoses and leave them on a slope for the winter. Doesn’t take long.

So for the record I did that this time. Putting it all back together will take much longer – but I’d almost certainly have to do it anyway, so this way I at least save the effort of clearing out the inside of the hoses.

This sort of thing has happened before but not for a long time…

The dough basically doesn’t rise in the bowl or the bread pan at all. Stuck with the option of throwing it away or baking it and seeing what will happen I elect to waste some time and propane, and this is the result. Would have been better off not baking it.

What did I do wrong? Probably I absently failed to include some ingredient. Nothing came to mind but I was a little hung over at the time. Anyway: This was useless so it fed the birds and I tried again…

Happily it was a bright sunny day so it didn’t hit my batteries at all. And this one came out fine. Exactly the same recipe. Sometimes life is an adventure, if by adventure I mean sometimes I screw things up for no apparent reason.